Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,150
in a certain way—" I winced. "I won't get technical on you, but I knew that when I got to the door, it might need a larger or smaller dose of explosives, so I could adjust the strength.
"I managed to reduce it by seventy percent, but Dean, who’d run for cover, came at me when he realized what I was doing, and stopped me from deactivating it. We got into a fist fight, and I was a lot more of a wimp back then, so he managed to drag me away. The guards got there, didn't realize there was no time and..."
"How many died?"
"All of them," I said roughly. "Apart from the two who stayed in the security office."
I didn’t tell her that Dean was another casualty of that night.
When I’d tracked his ass down in Ecuador, I made sure he paid for his sins, and no mistake.
"Jesus, Cruz." Her hand moved to my shoulder, while the other moved to cup my chin, tilting my head forward so that I was looking her in the eye. "You need to tell the council you're not going to build anything for them, except maybe the clubhouse."
"The Italians…” I gritted my teeth. “The MC, they're all I have, Indy—"
She shook her head. "No, they're not. You have me now."
And with that, she pressed her mouth to mine and shut me up.
Twenty-Seven
Indy
The last thing Cruz was, was a little boy.
I knew that, appreciated, in fact, that he was very much a grown-up, but as I looked at him while he told me the sorry tale of a friendship that had soured, of choices that took him down a path that led to me, of insane decisions he’d made that cost people their lives, in his eyes, I knew he was lost.
I'd never imagined he had a past like that. A history loaded with tragedy.
It should have repelled me. Should have made me turn him away, but the more he talked, the more I remembered.
The information leaked that year had revealed a level of corruption that had stunned the world. Even me, tits deep in trying to fuck my way free of my past, had heard the news.
I wasn't about to say that the guards’ lives were worth those revelations coming to light, because they weren't, but... I'd be a hypocrite if I hadn't heard about those reports that revealed war crimes to the world and didn’t think that was vital too.
My bloodline consisted of career criminals. My friends and family-by-choice were cut from the same cloth.
They made righteous kills, I knew that, knew that was how Nyx managed to get to sleep at night, but more than that, they committed crimes every day of the week. Their morals weren’t like an average person’s in society. Neither were mine, simply by association.
The same family wished to retaliate in a way that would kill only God knew how many. As much as I was discouraging Cruz, it was only because I didn't want him to...
What?
Didn't want his new road name to be Bomber?
Didn't want to fuck a man with so much blood on his hands?
Was it simply that I knew once he did it, there was no going back.
He would become a part of the Sinners’ arsenal, and if he was cold-blooded, maybe I'd have been okay with that. Less with the fucking of said cold-blooded killer, but I could accept it.
Only, Cruz had demons.
I wasn't saying that he prayed every morning for atonement, neither was I saying that the guilt forged him into being a better man, but I knew the cross on his back, as much as the one on mine, was his hope for a better Cruz to come out of the past.
I knew for a fact his morals were questionable. He'd thought nothing of cleaning up my mess, did it on a regular basis for the club, and he wasn't wasting away under the weight of his history.
Not physically, at any rate.
But his soul?
For the first time, I'd seen it. As he revealed a secret that, to him, made him a monster.
To another woman, perhaps he was.
To me, however, he was perfect.
I was a wretched mess, my soul twisted and warped. It was selfish of me, but I couldn't deal with somebody normal. I needed someone as wretched as me. Together, two negatives could make a positive. Now, I truly knew we could be together.